[tz] Macquarie Island - ISO 3166-1 code AQ vs AU

[Tobias Conradi]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Stuart Bishop <stuart at stuartbishop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:55 PM, Tobias Conradi
> <mail.2012 at tobiasconradi.com> wrote:
>> What is the reason to have Macquarie Island as AQ Antartica in the
>> IANA time zone database?
>
> Macquarie Island is politically Australian territory, but
> geographically on the Antarctic continent.

Pacific Ocean, between NZ and AQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island
"Macquarie Island lies in the southwest corner of the Pacific Ocean,
about half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, at 54°30S,
158°57E."

Southern Ocean
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/629
"Macquarie Island (34 km long x 5 km wide) is an oceanic island in the
Southern Ocean"

The Antarctic Treaty 1959-12-01
http://www.ats.aq/documents/ats/treaty_original.pdf
"The provisions of the present Treaty shall apply to the area south of
60° South Latitude"

>I don't know if the 'ISO
> 3166 2-character country code' zone.tab refers to is supposed to
> reference the political or geographic code,
I don't know why that field should be used differently and am not
aware of other deviations from the ISO standard.

> but it at least seems
> consistent with respect to the Antarctic bases and islands.
The others can be in the ISO country AQ, while Macquarie simply is
not. All the other coordinates for AQ given in zone.tab are "south of
60° South Latitude" and fall under the Antarctic Treaty.

--
Tobias Conradi
Rheinsberger Str. 18
10115 Berlin
Germany

http://tobiasconradi.com